


By the Light of the Moon

by caesia



Series: Moon Cycles [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 15:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caesia/pseuds/caesia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa receives a visitor to the Eyrie who reminds her of her past, but his past is complicated too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By the Light of the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Game of Ships Ghost Ships Challenge. Spoilers through ADWD, and I had to fudge the timelines a bit to make things work. I hope you enjoy! Feedback is always welcome.

“In the final tilt, the Knight of Tears faced Ser Edwin Dayne. His armor gleamed so bright that Ser Dayne could barely look at him as they rode against one another, and the Knight of Tears was victorious. He lay a crown of violets on the lap of Queen Naerys, purple as her eyes, and the whole crowd wept at her beauty.”

Alayne waited a few seconds after finishing her story, but when Sweetrobin didn’t stir, she carefully slid off the side of his bed and crept to the door. Once she was safely in the corridor, she gave a sigh of relief. Lord Robert had finally been convinced to stay in his own room at night, but he still demanded stories every evening. If she tried to leave before he was completely asleep, his fits could last hours. As it was, she often exhausted her supply of tales about brave knights in battle, and had to turn as a last resort to stories of love and courtship. She had listened breathlessly to her mother tell of Aemon the Dragonknight’s forbidden love for Queen Naerys when she was a child, but now she liked those stories even less than Lord Robert did.

 _There are no true knights_. Her thoughts were dark as the new moon in the night sky outside her window as she prepared for bed. She settled in front of the fire with a small cup of spiced wine and the most recent letter from her father in her lap. He’d arrived in Heart’s Home for Lord Corbrey’s wedding, to be held in a fortnight, but he was considering accompanying Lord Grafton to Gulltown afterwards to speak to some of his contacts there in person. He was charging Alayne with the responsibility of leading the household down from the Eyrie to the Gates of the Moon where they would wait out the winter at a lower altitude.

 _Winter._ For a fleeting moment, the image of a spreading tree, bone-white with leaves red as fire, red as blood, flashed through her mind. But there was no heart tree in the Eyrie, no weirwood in any place Alayne has ever lived, so she pushed the image aside. She reread the letter instead, mentally calculating how many supplies still needed to be carried down from the cellars, which servants could walk the steps themselves and which would need to be carried in the baskets, and how on earth to keep Lord Robert from seizing without resorting to a double dose of sweetsleep.

Alayne’s thoughts were interrupted by a faint sound at her door, and she frowned as she rose to answer it. She had been so sure that Sweetrobin was asleep, and he normally burst into her room crying instead of shyly scratching at her door.

But Lord Robert had clammy hands to turn the knob, and the beast revealed when she opened her chamber door had only paws tipped in dark claws that gleamed like dragonglass. Its shoulders were taller than her waist, and its thick white fur glowed in the light from the fire behind her. Most striking of all were its eyes, red and piercing and fixed intently on her face.

“Ghost,” Sansa gasped brokenly as she collapse to the floor, her arms wrapping tightly around the neck of her brother’s direwolf. He was her half-brother, her bastard brother, least favored and least missed, but Ghost was the first glimpse she’d had of her family since her father had bowed his head before the sword of Ilyn Payne (she couldn’t bring herself to count the sight of her father’s head, rotting above the walls of the Red Keep), and the first direwolf she’d seen since she’d sobbed into the bloodstained fur of her beloved Lady.

Ghost wagged his tail happily and buried his nose in her own dark hair, then suddenly stopped. He took a step back out of her arms and sneezed three times, then gave his head a decisive shake.

Sansa grimaced. “ I know, Ghost. I don’t like it any more than you do.” And suddenly it was true. It had been months since Sansa had mourned the loss of her red hair, and now she only remembered that her hair had once been bright as flames when Petyr left a jar of dye on the table beside her bath. It had been months, too, since she’d called herself by her own name, even in her head. _I am Sansa Stark, Lord Eddard’s daughter and Lady Catelyn’s, the blood of Winterfell._ Thinking their names still gave her pain, but now they gave her strength too. “Ghost, where is Jon? Where is my brother? I thought you were at the Wall with him,”

Ghost only gave her a long look with eyes that suddenly seemed sad. Then he walked past her into her rooms.

Sansa thought she understood. _He is a wolf without a Stark, and I am a Stark without a wolf_. She closed the door and sat down on the floor in front of the fire. Ghost settled next to her and dropped his head in her lap. Gently, she stroked his ears and his long nose. She told him all about her life after leaving Winterfell, about Lady and Joffrey, about her father’s beheading and Arya’s escape, about Cersei and the Hound and Margaery and her dreams of Highgarden. He growled softly when she told him of being beaten in front of the whole court, and he licked her hands and her tear-stained face when she told him about her marriage to a Lannister and the deaths of her mother and Robb. By the time she finished telling him of Petyr and Marillon and Lysa and Sweetrobin, the fire was only glowing coals and her legs had fallen asleep under the weight of Ghost’s head.

Sansa laced her fingers in fur of the direwolf’s neck as she walked to her sleeping chamber. There she untied her laces and let her dressing gown fall to the floor before she climbed into her bed. Ghost soon followed, and as she curled up against his back, Sansa could almost imagine herself back in Winterfell. She drifted to sleep thinking of grey eyes in a long face, and she dreamed of her last brother, now lost to her forever like the rest.

 

 

Over the next few days, Sansa established new routines, all with Ghost at her side. She called him Griffin, after the last of the Mountain Kings, and she insisted to everyone who asked that he was a dog, sent to her as a pet from her beloved father. It was a testament to the respect she’d earned as Petyr’s daughter that no one openly questioned her, though Ghost was three times the size of any dog Sansa had ever seen. Ghost was gentle as a puppy with Sweetrobin, even letting him sit on his back and yank his ears, though he refused to take a single step lest the boy lose his balance and fall.

At night, Sansa sat in front of the fire with Ghost and made plans. The wolf’s appearance had rekindled her memories of home, so sharp and sweet, and had given her new dreams. Winterfell was her birthright, and if she was the last Stark, it was her duty to reclaim it. _Then I will see the North made strong and whole again._ She decided that her best ally would be Lord Royce and the Lords Declarant. During the chaos of the move to the Gates of the Moon, she would find a way to contact them. If she had to, she would reveal her identity to Nestor Royce as well. She would make a different impression this time than the weepy, frightened girl she had been when he questioned her about her Aunt Lysa’s death. _I am a wolf. I had forgotten that before, but now I remember._

Later, she snuggled next to Ghost and stroked his fur as she fell asleep. He had been gaunt under his thick fur when he had arrived in the Eyrie, but now he ate meat from the kitchens twice a day and the gloss was coming back into his coat. As she petted his sides, her fingers brushed dozens of scars that crisscrossed his ribs, his back, his shoulders. Not for the first time, Sansa wondered what kind of dangers he had faced travelling across half of Westeros to find her, and why so many of the scars were straight like cuts from a blade.

 

 

One evening, nearly two weeks after Ghost had arrived in the night like his namesake, the wolf was nowhere to be found, and the floor next to Sansa’s feet felt strangely empty. Lord Robert was testy and nothing on his plate could please him. Sensing that he was working himself up into a fit, Sansa tried to soothe him with warm goat’s milk and honey, which he usually sucked down as greedily as he had once sucked as his mother’s teat, but even this treat couldn’t calm him. It took hours before Sansa could get him to fall asleep, and her eyes drooped tiredly as she walked through the halls to her rooms. As soon as she opened the door to her chambers, she felt wide awake. Instead of a white direwolf stretched out before the fire, the room was occupied by a different ghost.

Jon Snow stood before her, a frown troubling the features of his long face. He wore only a rough linen shirt and dark breeches that clung too tightly to his strong thighs. A thick beard covered his jaw and neck, and his dark curls reached almost to his shoulders. Sansa remembered him as a boy of fourteen, still growing into himself, but he was clearly a man now, tall and broad. _This must be what Robb looked like when they crowned him king_ , Sansa thought, dazed. _This must be what my father looked like when he married my mother._

Jon approached her slowly, as though he might startle her, and took her hands in his. His touch suddenly reminded her to breathe.

“You’re alive,” Sansa whispered, barely daring to believe her own words. “Did Ghost bring you here? Oh, Jon, it’s so good to see you.”

Jon squeezed her hands, but his face darkened when she mentioned Ghost. “It’s good to see you too, Sansa. The best thing that’s happened to me in a long time.” He laughed darkly. “I didn’t think I’d find you,”

Now that he stood closer to her, Sansa could see the scars that cover his skin, disappearing beneath his shirt at his collarbone and causing the skin next to his eye to pucker. His eyes themselves were exactly as she remembered, though, grey as the winter sky. She pulled one hand from his and rested it on his cheek, softly stroking the pale skin there. “How did you find me? And where is Ghost?”

If it was possible, Jon’s face darkened even further. “It’s a long story. We should sit down.” He ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders, then let them fall away. “No matter what, I promise I won’t hurt you, Sansa. I would never.”

Confused, Sansa tucked herself against his side as they sat facing the fire. “Of course not. You’re my brother.”

Jon kept his eyes on the fire as he began to tell her his story, but he wrapped one arm around her reassuringly. Sansa listened in wonder as he told her of being made Lord Commander, his dealings with the wildlings, and his respect for King Stannis. When he described battling wights and the Others and the war that was coming to the North, his voice became rough with despair, and Sansa clutched his hand between hers to coax him back to the present. He hesitated when he came to his decision to march on the Boltons.

“It was a threat to the Watch. There was a mutiny…”

Sansa thought about the scars she had seen and shivered. “But you survived?”

Jon nodded. “It took days for me to recover. I had…a sort of a vision, though. It sounds strange, but it showed me that the Boltons don’t have Arya, after all. They married Ramsay to Jeyne Poole.” He pulled Sansa closer. They had been best friends, once, when they were innocent young girls. “When I woke up, I knew I had to travel south, to find you. On my way, I got lost in the Neck. Howland Reed found me and brought me to Greywater Watch.”

Sansa had heard stories of the mysterious keep. They said it could move from place to place, or turn invisible. She’d never met any Reeds, though, and she remembered Maester Luwin telling her that they rarely left the Neck. Jon was silent for a moment, and then longer, until Sansa almost felt that he wouldn’t finish his story. Finally, he spoke.

“Howland Reed fought with Ned Stark during the Rebellion. He was one of the men who went to Dorne to look for Lyanna. He told me…he told me she was my mother, and Rhaegar Targaryen was my father.”

Now Sansa was the silent one, as Jon explained how their father- just her father, now- had called him his bastard to keep him safe, as he’d promised his dying sister.

“I’m your cousin, Sansa, not your brother.”

Sansa found her voice. “It doesn’t matter. You’re still a Stark, Jon. You’re still a wolf.”

Abruptly, Jon stood up and walked toward the fire, so she couldn’t see his face. “That’s the other thing I have to tell you. Old Nan used to tell us stories of skinchangers, wildlings who could see through the eyes of birds and wolves. When I was attacked, I didn’t wake up as myself. I woke up as Ghost.” He turned back towards her with a pleading look. “I’m only a man on the three nights leading up the to full moon. The rest of the time, I’m Ghost. I’m a wolf.”

As Jon waited anxiously for her reaction, Sansa thought about all he’d told her. He’d faced the terrors north of the Wall and the betrayal of his own men. He’d become a creature out of the tales men told around fires in the winter. He’d finally learned the identity of his mother, only to learn that he’d never known his true father.

Most of all, she thought about the comfort and the strength he’d given her, how she could say her own name now and make her own decisions. Sansa stood.

“I was lost before you came here, Jon. I barely remembered who I was anymore. You’ve given me back so much. You _and_ Ghost.” Sansa lifted her hands and placed them on his shoulders. “I feel safer around you.”

Jon let out a deep breath, and then his arms surrounded her. Sansa felt the pounding of his heart against her cheek, and his voice rumbled deep in his chest when he spoke to her. “I thought you might send me away.”

“Never,” Sansa promised. She took him by the hand and led him to her bedroom. Jon looked awkward as she took off her gown and slid under her sheets in only her shift, but she reached for him insistently. “Hold me, Jon, please.”

“When you wake up, I’ll be a wolf again,” he warned, but he followed her into bed. The warmth of his body spread through her limbs as he held her. With their feet tangled together under the sheets and her face tucked against his neck, Sansa fell asleep while Jon stroked her darkened hair.

 

 

The next night, Sansa complained of a headache and retired early. She felt guilty for leaving Maester Coleman with the task of putting Sweetrobin to bed, but then she thought of Jon waiting for her in her room. They had so much to discuss, yet so little time to reconnect before Jon would be a wolf again at night as well as during the day. When she entered her rooms, she found him shirtless, leaning over her washing basin with a dagger against his face. Instantly, Sansa felt her face flush. _He’s your cousin,_ she chided herself. _Stop being such a ninny!_

When he looked up, however, Sansa had to wonder whether his face was red from shaving or if he felt the same heat warming his belly that she did. He gave her a wry grin and wiped the soap from his face with his shirt.

“It’s strange, but every time the moon comes, I have a full-grown beard. It itches something fierce.”

Before she could stop herself, Sansa walked across the room and took his smooth face in her hands. He looked younger now, but no less handsome, especially when he smiled and his eyes lit up. Ignoring the butterflies that filled her stomach, she led him to the couch in front of the fire. “Tell me more about your brothers in the Watch.”

She and Jon had never spent much time together as children. For a while, she had seen him as a project, a sullen, awkward boy she could turn into a gallant knight. Jon had submitted to her lessons in dancing and proper conversation without complaint, but also without much success. Eventually she found that Jeyne was a better partner for dancing, even though she was a girl, and Robb made a more charming knight when he pretended to save her from monsters in the Godswood. Jon had found her, though, when no one else was even looking for her, and their conversation flowed surprisingly easily. He spoke of his brothers, the family who accepted him regardless of his birth, and the lessons he’d learned from old Jeor Mormont. Sansa described the web of courtiers and nobles in King’s Landing, their complicated motivations and tenuous alliances. Sometimes Sansa could tell that Jon was trying to keep his stories lighthearted, like the jokes that Sam and Grenn had played and the way the ice froze over entire fields so they looked enchanted. It made her think of the girl Jon had known in Winterfell, who loved songs and chivalry, and the boy she herself had known, who wanted nothing more then a happy family who loved him.

As the night grew later, their conversation drifted into more serious territory. Jon hesitantly asked about Petyr, and for the first time Sansa admitted aloud that she wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t just another game piece to him, to be revealed at the most opportune moment. She told him of her plans to reach the Lords Declarant while Petyr was away and rally them behind her cause herself. Long into the night they strategized, and Sansa was impressed by Jon’s advice. She’d learned about displays of power from the Lannisters, and shrewd manipulation from Petyr, but Jon showed an instinct for innovation and a deep concern for the greater good. Petyr and Cersei had never shown concern for anyone but themselves and their children.

When they went to bed, Jon fell asleep immediately, his left arm curling under her cheek and down her back to tangle in her hair, but Sansa lay awake a long time. With her eyes she traced the dark ridge of his brow, the thick lashes that lay against his cheeks, his straight nose, his full mouth again and again. It had been so long since Sansa had hoped to meet the kind of man her father would have chosen for her, but here was Jon, gentle and brave and kind as anyone she could have dreamed up as a girl, and strong and handsome as well. Her mind made up, Sansa whispered a soft goodnight and went to sleep.

 

 

The next day Sansa was kept too busy to dwell on her plans for the night. They would be descending the mountain on the following morning, and the last preparations necessary to move the household were tiresome. Ghost followed dutifully at her heels as she gave directions and oversaw the packing of their supplies. She mused as she worked on what Jon had told her about being inside the mind of a wolf. _I’m not quite myself, really. I can understand what people are saying, but I can’t think about it the way I might if I were human, and I learn a lot more from smells and heartbeats anyway. I still have emotions, but not the words to describe them or analyze them. When I’m a man, though, the words come flooding back._ Sansa wondered if Ghost could sense her nervousness in her smell or her heartbeat, and she forced herself to focus on her many tasks before another blush could steal over her cheeks.

When she returned to her rooms that night after putting Sweetrobin to bed, Sansa felt grateful that Jon would meet her as a man and not a wolf, for he certainly would have been able to sense her hammering heart and her shaking hands. She found Jon gazing into the fire next to the screens that hid the bath she’d ordered from view.

“I hope you don’t mind if I take a bath while we talk,” Sansa said, gesturing towards the tub. “I want to make a good impression when we arrive at the Gates of the Moon tomorrow.”

Jon looked rather startled at the fact that she would bathe with him in the room, but made no move to stop her. “As you wish,” he said, his voice rough.

Behind the screens, Sansa slipped into the hot water with a sigh. For a moment, she simply basked in the steam scented with lemon zest and juniper oil before she reached for the uneven lump of lye soap she’d taken from the laundry room earlier that day. It would dry out her skin, but it would also strip the color from her hair in a way her fine Lyseni soaps could not. She’d used the same trick once her first month in the Eyrie, when she’d woken in a panic that her red hair would never return.

As Sansa set about scrubbing the darkness from her hair, she talked with Jon about the move the next day. He told her of his secretive ascent as Ghost, hidden by a night with no moon. He wondered aloud how Lord Robert would make the trip, and Sansa reminded him that he’d have to travel last, so as not to startle the mules. When the water she squeezed out of her hair ran clear, Sansa stepped out of the blackened water of the tub and dried off, soothing her skin with fragrant oil before she dressed. Jon’s mouth fell open as she stepped around the screens.

“Your hair,” he commented dimly. Sansa decided his response was promising and permitted herself a small smile as she sat next to the fire to let her hair dry.

“Bronze Yohn Royce saw me at Winterfell and the tourney at King’s Landing, and Nestor Royce knew my mother. I must look like myself if I am to claim my inheritance as a Stark.”

Jon moved to sit next to her, hesitantly reaching out to touch a strand near her face. “I’d forgotten how bright it was.” He paused before continuing, “The free folk call hair like yours _kissed by fire._ It’s supposed to be lucky.”

Sansa felt like she could use all the luck she could get. As they continued to talk, she felt a tension between them that hadn’t been there before. Maybe it was her bath, which continued to fill the room with heady fragrances, or their proximity to the fire, but Jon’s eyes kept glancing down to where her damp hair across her breast, and Sansa felt acutely aware of the breadth of his shoulders and the tendons that stood out along his arms below his shirt sleeves. When they stood up to go to bed, Sansa trod on the hem of her gown and stumbled against Jon. The heat of his hands around her waist stayed with her all the way to her bedchamber. There, she slowly removed her dressing gown the way she had the previous two nights before turning to face Jon.

Instead of her usual shift, she wore a nightgown of pale Myrish lace. The gown lacked sleeves, and was held up only by pairs of silk ribbons that tied over her shoulders. The bodice hugged the curves that she’d developed since leaving Winterfell, and sheer panels exposed her legs from knee to ankle. Jon stared, blinking, before he turned away resolutely. His rejection burned her cheeks like a slap.

“Sansa, we can’t,” he pleaded, his voice breaking.

“Why not? You said we were cousins, not siblings. Unless you don’t think I’m…” Sansa trailed off. She’d been relieved when Joffrey had broken their engagement to marry Margaery, truly, but some of the gossip the flew around the court after he’d set her aside had been vicious, and Petyr only commented on her appearance to compare her to her mother.

Jon turned and approached her, reaching out to trace her cheek with a finger before pulling away. “You’re beautiful, Sansa, more beautiful than I deserve. Three nights a month I’m a man, but the rest of the time I’m a dumb beast. What kind of husband would I make? What kind of father could I be?”

“A better one than Petyr, or Sweetrobin, or Harry the Heir, or some Northern lord they would force on me to get their hands on Winterfell. I _trust_ you, Jon, and I choose you for myself.”

“Only for three nights a month,” he replied darkly.

“All the time. As Ghost you can protect me and comfort me and remind me of home. And I have no doubt you’ll look after our children as carefully as you look after poor Sweetrobin.”

“And what will you tell our children when they ask who their father is?”

“The truth, when they’re old enough to understand. And if anyone else asks, I’ll say their father was a wolf, and you can tear out the throat of anyone who objects.” Sansa moved closer to Jon. His mouth curved into a grim smile, but his eyes were soft.

“You’re quite determined, aren’t you.”

“Yes,” she whispered, but his lips were on hers before she could answer. His mouth was hot and firm beneath hers, and as he wrapped his arms around her back, she parted her lips. His tongue surprised her with its roughness as it curled against her own. She grabbed his shirt in one hand and clawed his back with the other, and he nipped her bottom lip in retaliation. Then his lips moved across her jaw and down her neck, pressing hot kisses into the delicate skin there.

Sansa felt her nightgown sag as he blindly pulled at the ribbons to continue his kisses across her collarbone. His hands made sweeping circles over her hips and sides, and the sensation of the lace rubbing against her skin inflamed her. An undignified whimper left her throat as she pulled at his shirt until she could slip her hands underneath the rough linen to stroke his stomach and chest, which rippled with scars on top of muscle. Just as Sansa felt her gown falling further, Jon swept her up in his arms and lay her carefully on the bed. Sansa shimmied out of her gown while Jon pulled his shirt over his wide shoulders.

A cold stab of nerves struck her stomach at being naked in front of a man, but Jon quickly leaned over her to taste again her lips, her throat, the soft skin along the slope of her breasts. His hands crept up her sides from her hips until he could alternately stroke and lick her stiff nipples. The feeling of his hot mouth and calloused fingers against her softest skin overwhelmed Sansa, so she could only gasp and squirm and call out Jon’s name. He answered her summons by straddling her thighs and bending to kiss her lips, holding his weight above her by leaning on one hand while the other traveled down between her legs. She pulled at the curls at the back of his neck and pressed her mouth more firmly to his, but he pulled away gasping against her neck when his fingers found her opening.

“So hot and wet. Gods, Sansa, so hot and wet and sweet and gorgeous. You’re gorgeous,” Jon panted, gently stroking a spot between her legs that made her groan and whine and rock her hips against his hand. He scraped his teeth up and down her neck while his fingers worked, and as he hit a point just behind her ear she came.

When the stars left her vision and she finally felt she could breathe again, Sansa opened her eyes to find that Jon had taken off his breeches and was stroking his weeping cock. She reached for him, but he frowned.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Sansa. And I don’t want to get you with child just as we set off to wage a war. It could be months before we make it to Winterfell.”

“I’ll drink moon tea, then. And you won’t hurt me any more then you have to. I trust you.”

That seemed to make up Jon’s mind. It did hurt when he entered her, but he kept his hips still as he murmured fervent apologies in her ear. The pain only eased a bit as he began to move, but by the time he shuddered and spilled, Sansa only remembered the devotion she’d seen shining out of his eyes as he pressed into her.

 

 

The next evening, when she lay down beside Ghost, Sansa blinked away a tear. _Only three nights._ It would have to be enough.


End file.
